convenient. just removed the entrenched competitor app for one of their services.
Skype has always been amongst the worse in terms of battery drainage. 6 months ago it was so bad that my phone wouldn't last for a couple of hours in standby with Skype active. It got much better but it's still so bad that I cannot keep it active. I basically keep it disabled and only open it when I need to talk to a contact, then I logout again. And I don't know what's wrong with WhatsApp messenger, because it too is guilty of a lot of battery drainage lately. Hence I uninstalled it completely.
Google's Hangouts is barely visible in the stats on battery life that I collect (with GSam Battery). The battery usage could be hidden within system services, however I always test messenger apps with a before & after test. In the case of Hangouts, I disabled it completely for a complete discharge, after which I enabled it again and no significant difference happened.
skype et al era just more visible. though it is just a matter of google not allowing other in their infrastructure for the benefit of the user. not even offering as a paid service for those competitors. pure old greed.
1. you can for example disable the google account synchronization happening, either for Hangouts specifically, or for the whole google account and notice the difference. If you don't trust doing that, you can always install CyanogenMod on your phone, without any of Google's services, at which point you'll have no capability of synchronizing your Google account at all. And then notice the difference between that and simply not synchronizing your Google account. I did that btw, because as I've said, I'm a fanatic in regards to battery life.
2. I use and have used other messenger services regularly, like Facebook's Messenger. None of them have been so bad as Skype is.
edit: to those answering "Hangouts", can that actually be considered competition?
edit: yes.
Whatsapp is like the Ryanair of messaging: no ads, no games, (up to FB acquisition) no data mining, basically: no frills, no hassles.
Compare that with Skype/MSN Messenger, the FB Messenger or basically any other messenger out there: ads, more ads, MORE FUCKING ADS, a PITA to add/find new contacts (Whatsapp just bootstraps with the contact manager of the phone!), oh and did I forget MORE FUCKING SHITLOADS OF ADS? And no way to pay to just get rid of them?
Facebook's Messenger for example, or any messenger service not mapped directly to your primary phone number, has no problems with any of that.
> did I forget MORE FUCKING SHITLOADS OF ADS?
Facebook's Messenger has no ads, or promoted posts, or anything related to your stream in it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.o...
This goes for Google Hangouts, Skype, Slack or XMPP services in general (hosted by you or not), amongst myriads of messenger services that don't do ads. So I think you're exaggerating.
Skype has ads like hell (open a chat on a netbook, half the vertical screen size is lost to ads and fucked up layout), Facebook the same (sidebar on the web site), and likely also data mining.
GTalk, for example, offered the same services, plus sync across all device, plus better security and encryption.
There are and have been many messaging apps just like whatsapp: Viber, Kik... And many more that we have never heard of.